Restaurant Report: Prima in Honolulu

When you pull up to this highly regarded restaurant in one of Honolulu’s sprawling suburbs, the first instinct is to double-check your GPS. The ambitious culinary experiment is bizarrely sandwiched in a plaza between a Foodland grocery store and a Baskin-Robbins.

Ryan Iker, the chef at Prima, had the same reaction when he pulled up for dinner about a year ago, but all of his doubts disappeared when he saw the restaurant’s pizza oven, a Stefano Ferrara made by hand, brick by brick, in Naples by a third-generation oven builder. “I thought, ‘This is going to be good,’ ” he said. “I’ve always wanted to work with one of those.”

When Mr. Iker decided to move to Oahu late last year, he returned to Prima, met the owner and discovered that it was undergoing a total makeover. The three original chefs were departing. Suddenly, Mr. Iker had his dream pizza oven at his disposal.

Originally from Ohio, he said much of what Hawaii had to offer a chef was totally new to him. But he was determined to keep Prima’s focus on local foods, cooked creatively, even if he hadn’t heard of some of those foods before. The resulting menu is an eclectic mix, loosely described as a modern American/Hawaiian take on Italian food.

The menu is divided into “Pizza” and “Not Pizza” categories. From the first category, the best I sampled during a recent visit was what Mr. Iker called his first triumph: the pork belly pizza. The main ingredient is brined for three days, then braised and loaded on the pizza with garlic oil, rosemary, mozzarella, Parmesan and radicchio.

“Not Pizza” highlights include the penne di crema, which incorporates prosciutto, mushrooms and truffle oil, and a meltingly tender appetizer of maitake mushrooms and a cauliflower purée. The daily specials often revolve around whatever seafood was caught that day.

“We wanted to stay true to Prima’s origins,” Mr. Iker said. “We want to be a little bit different, but not pretentious at all. It’s all about local food and a comfortable place to eat.”

The space, casual but chic, with reclaimed wood tables and molded-plastic Eames chairs in a cheery robin’s egg blue, makes being pretentious impossible — especially when you have to go outside, and past the Baskin-Robbins, to use the restroom. And none of it really matters once the remarkable food arrives. It turns out your GPS took you to the right place after all.

Prima Hawaii, 108 Hekili Street, No. 107; 808-888-8933; primahawaii­.com. Average price of a meal for two without drinks or tip is about $40.